COUNSELLING

Individuals

This may include counselling for depression, anxiety, grief and loss, domestic and family violence, trauma, stress and work related difficulties, relationship issues, step family or blended family issues, family conflict, relationship breakdown and parenting difficulties.

Counselling can also help individuals to:

Explore and understand their current and often multi layered difficulties in their lives.

Gain a deeper understanding of themselves, in relation to their self or to others.

Understand their relationships with partners, family members, friends and colleagues.

Couples

In a couples counselling session, couples are enabled to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to understand each other's experiences and views, to appreciate each other's needs and build on couple strengths to make useful changes in their relationship and lives.

Counselling can also help a couple to:

Understand their current relationship.

Rediscover what brought them together.

Understand what they now want from their relationship and from each other.

Understand how the relationship has become where it is now.

Explore what they feel ready to try now, to improve the relationship.

There is no judgement on who is right or wrong, no telling clients what to do and no encouragement to persuade people to stay together or to separate.

Families

In a family therapy session, family members are enabled to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to understand each other’s experiences and views, to appreciate each other’s needs, to build on family strengths and to make useful changes in their relationships and lives.

Family therapy is considered to be a very effective approach in the prevention and treatment of various emotional and behavioural problems within childhood and adolescence. For this reason, children and adolescents attend counselling with their family members or with at least one or two parents, as opposed to attending on their own as individuals.

Family therapy can also help a family to:

Address the problems people present within context of their relationships within their family.

View the problem of an individual in relation to all of the family members and enhance the ability of family members to support each other.

Benefit families in times of crisis and with long-standing problems with issues including: child and adolescent mental health, adult mental health, alcohol and substance abuse, parenting skills and family functioning, work or school related problems, trauma, loss, bereavement and issues of transitional stages of life e.g. becoming parents, children leaving home and retirement.

Divorce

Counselling for individuals or couples, who are separating or divorcing to help work towards gaining an understanding of how to navigate their path through this difficult time, including:

How to move through and manage the grief of a relationship ending, pre or post separation.

How relationships can change.

How to navigate the separation, including the needs of children.

Gaining an understanding of parenting children as separate parents.

Referrals to mediation, divorce services and information on family law.

Becoming ready for a new relationship or adapting to becoming a step-family.